Truman, who had been chosen as vice president for domestic political reasons, was poorly prepared to assume the presidency. He had no experience of foreign affairs, knew little about Roosevelt’s intentions, and was intimidated by the giant shoes he now had to fill. His first decisions were dictated by events or plans already laid. In July, two months after the German forces surrendered, he met at Potsdam, Germany, with Stalin and Churchill (who was succeeded at the conference by Clement Attlee) to discuss future operations against Japan and a peace settlement for Europe. Little was accomplished, and there would not be another meeting between Soviet and American heads of state for 10 years.

Hopes that good relations between the superpowers would ensure world peace soon faded as a result of the Stalinization of eastern Europe and Soviet support of communist insurgencies in various parts of the globe. Events came to a head in 1947 when Britain, weakened by a failing economy, decided to pull out of the eastern Mediterranean. This would leave both Greece, where a communist-inspired civil war was raging, and Turkey to the mercies of the Soviet Union. Truman now came into his own as a national leader, asking Congress to appropriate aid to Greece and Turkey and asserting, in effect, that henceforth the United States must help free peoples in general to resist communist aggression. This policy, known as the Truman Doctrine, has been criticized for committing the United States to the support of unworthy regimes and for taking on greater burdens than it was safe to assume. At first, however, the Truman Doctrine was narrowly applied. Congress appropriated $400,000,000 for Greece and Turkey, saving both from falling into unfriendly hands, and thereafter the United States relied mainly on economic assistance to support its foreign policy.

The keystone of this policy, and its greatest success, was the European Recovery Program, usually called the Marshall Plan. Europe’s economy had failed to recover after the war, its paralysis being worsened by the exceptionally severe winter of 1946–47. Thus, in June 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed the greatest foreign-aid program in world history in order to bring Europe back to economic health. In 1948 Congress created the Economic Cooperation Administration and over the next five years poured some $13,000,000,000 worth of aid into western Europe. (Assistance was offered to Eastern-bloc countries also, but they were forced by Stalin to decline.) The plan restored economic vitality and confidence to the region, while undermining the local communist parties. In 1949 Truman proposed extending similar aid to underdeveloped nations throughout the world, but the resulting Point Four Program was less successful than the Marshall Plan. Experience showed that it was easier to rebuild a modern industrial economy than to develop one from scratch.

U.S. policy for limiting Soviet expansion had developed with remarkable speed. Soon after the collapse of hopes for world peace in 1945 and 1946, the Truman administration had accepted the danger posed by Soviet aggression and resolved to shore up noncommunist defenses at their most critical points. This policy, known as containment, a term suggested by its principal framer, George Kennan, resulted in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as in the decision to make the western zones of Germany (later West Germany) a pillar of strength. When the Soviet Union countered this development in June 1948 by blocking all surface routes into the western-occupied zones of Berlin, Britain and the United States supplied the sectors by air for almost a year until the Soviet Union called off the blockade. A logical culmination of U.S. policy was the creation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance among 12 (later 16) nations to resist Soviet aggression.

Containment worked less well in Asia. In December 1945 Truman sent General Marshall to China with instructions to work out an agreement between the Communist rebels and the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. This was an impossible task, and in the subsequent fighting Mao Zedong’s Communist forces prevailed. The Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949, and the United States then decided to concentrate its East Asian policy upon strengthening occupied Japan, with much better results.

Postwar domestic reorganization

After the end of World War II the vast U.S. military establishment was dismantled, its strength falling from 12,000,000 men and women to about 1,500,000 in 1947. The navy and army air forces remained the world’s strongest, however, and the U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons seemed to ensure security. In 1946 the United States formed an Atomic Energy Commission for purposes of research and development. The armed forces were reorganized under a secretary of defense by the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the U.S. Air Force as an independent service. In 1949 the services were brought together in a single Department of Defense, though each retained considerable autonomy. In that same year the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic device, opening an era of intense nuclear, and soon thermonuclear, competition.

Peace brought with it new fears. Demobilizing the armed forces might result in massive unemployment and another depression. Or, conversely, the huge savings accumulated during the war could promote runaway inflation. The first anxiety proved groundless, even though government did little to ease the transition to a peacetime economy. War contracts were canceled, war agencies diminished or dissolved, and government-owned war plants sold to private parties. But, after laying off defense workers, manufacturers rapidly tooled up and began producing consumer goods in volume. The housing industry grew too, despite shortages of every kind, thanks to mass construction techniques pioneered by the firm of Levitt and Sons, Inc., and other developers. All this activity created millions of new jobs. The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, also helped ease military personnel back into civilian life. It provided veterans with loans, educational subsidies, and other benefits.

Inflation was more troublesome. Congress lacked enthusiasm for wartime price controls and in June 1946 passed a bill preserving only limited controls. Truman vetoed the bill as inadequate, controls expired, and prices immediately soared. Congress then passed an even weaker price-control bill, which Truman signed. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, most price and wage controls had been lifted. In December the Office of Price Administration began to close down. As a result the consumer price index did not stabilize until 1948, when prices were more than a third above the 1945 level, while wage and salary income had risen by only about 15 percent.

Truman’s difficulties with Congress had begun in September 1945 when he submitted a 21-point domestic program, including proposals for an expansion of social security and public housing and for the establishment of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act banning discrimination. These and subsequent liberal initiatives, later known as the Fair Deal, were rejected by Congress, which passed only the Employment Act of 1946. This clearly stated the government’s responsibility for maintaining full employment and established a Council of Economic Advisers to advise the president.

Truman’s relations with Congress worsened after the 1946 elections. Voters, who were angered by the price-control debacle, a wave of strikes, and Truman’s seeming inability to lead or govern, gave control of both houses of Congress to Republicans for the first time since 1928. The president and the extremely conservative 80th Congress battled from beginning to end, not over foreign policy, where bipartisanship prevailed, but over domestic matters. Congress passed two tax reductions over Truman’s vetoes and in 1947, again over Truman’s veto, passed the Taft–Hartley Act, which restricted unions while extending the rights of management. Congress also rejected various liberal measures submitted by Truman, who did not expect the proposals to pass but wanted Congress on record as having opposed important social legislation.

By 1948, Truman had won support for his foreign policy, but he was expected to lose the presidential election that year because of his poor domestic record. Polls showed him lagging behind Dewey, again the Republican nominee, and to make matters worse the Democratic Party splintered. Former vice president Henry A. Wallace headed the Progressive Party ticket, which pledged to improve Soviet-American relations whatever the cost. Southerners, known as Dixiecrats, who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s strong civil rights plank, formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president. These defections appeared to ensure Truman’s defeat. Instead Truman won handily, receiving almost as many votes as his opponents combined. His support came largely from labour, which was upset by the Republican passage of the Taft–Hartley Act, from blacks, who strongly supported the Democrats’ civil rights provisions, and from farmers, who preferred the higher agricultural subsidies promised by the Democrats, especially at a time when commodity prices were falling.

The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1948, but Truman’s relations with that body continued to be troubled. In January 1949 he asked for a broad range of Fair Deal measures, with uneven results. Congress did approve a higher minimum wage, the extension of social security to 10,000,000 additional persons, more public works, larger sums for the TVA and for rural electrification, and the Housing Act of 1949, which authorized construction of 810,000 units for low-income families. Truman failed, however, to persuade Congress to repeal Taft–Hartley, to reform the agricultural subsidy system, to secure federal aid to education, to adopt his civil rights program, or, most importantly, to accept his proposal for national health insurance. He succeeded nevertheless in protecting the New Deal principle of federal responsibility for social welfare, and he helped form the Democratic agenda for the 1960s.

The Red Scare

Truman’s last years in office were marred by charges that his administration was lax about, or even condoned, subversion and disloyalty and that communists, called “reds,” had infiltrated the government. These accusations were made despite Truman’s strongly anticommunist foreign policy and his creation, in 1947, of an elaborate Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which resulted in hundreds of federal workers being fired and in several thousand more being forced to resign.

The excessive fear of communist subversion was fed by numerous sources. China’s fall to communism and the announcement of a Soviet atomic explosion in 1949 alarmed many, and fighting between communist and U.S.-supported factions in Korea heightened political emotions as well. Real cases of disloyalty and espionage also contributed, notably the theft of atomic secrets, for which Soviet agent Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were convicted in 1951 and executed two years later. Republicans had much to gain from exploiting these and related issues.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin stood out among those who held that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations amounted to “20 years of treason.” In February 1950 McCarthy claimed that he had a list (whose number varied) of State Department employees who were loyal only to the Soviet Union. McCarthy offered no evidence to support his charges and revealed only a single name, that of Owen Lattimore, who was not in the State Department and would never be convicted of a single offense. Nevertheless, McCarthy enjoyed a highly successful career, and won a large personal following, by making charges of disloyalty that, though mostly undocumented, badly hurt the Democrats. Many others promoted the scare in various ways, leading to few convictions but much loss of employment by government employees, teachers, scholars, and people in the mass media.

The Korean War

On June 25, 1950, a powerful invading force from the Soviet-supported Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) swept south of the 38th parallel into the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Within days, President Truman resolved to defend South Korea, even though there were few Americans in Korea and few troops ready for combat. The UN Security Council, acting during a Soviet boycott, quickly passed a resolution calling upon UN members to resist North Korean aggression.

After almost being driven into the sea, UN forces, made up largely of U.S. troops and commanded by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, counterattacked successfully and in September pushed the North Korean forces back across the border. Not content with this victory, the United States attempted to unify Korea by force, advancing almost to the borders of China and the Soviet Union. China, after its warnings were ignored, then entered the war, driving the UN forces back into South Korea. The battle line was soon stabilized along the 38th parallel, and armistice talks began on July 10, 1951, three months after Truman had relieved MacArthur for openly challenging U.S. policies. The talks dragged on fruitlessly, interrupted by outbreaks of fighting, until Eisenhower became president. The United States sustained some 142,000 casualties in this limited war, most of them occurring after China’s entry.

In addition to militarizing the Cold War, the Korean conflict widened its field. The United States assumed responsibility for protecting Taiwan against invasion from mainland China. Additional military aid was extended to the French in Indochina. In December 1950 Truman called for a crash program of rearmament, not just to support the forces in Korea but especially to expand the U.S. presence in Europe. As a result defense expenditures rose to $53,600,000,000 in 1953, four times the pre-Korean level, and would decline only modestly after the armistice.

Peace, growth, and prosperity

The stalemated Korean War, a renewal of inflation, and the continuing Red Scare persuaded Truman not to stand for reelection in 1952 and also gravely handicapped Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, the Democratic nominee. His opponent, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was an immensely popular war hero with great personal charm and no political record, making him extremely hard to attack. Although he disliked their methods, Eisenhower allowed Republican campaigners, including his running mate, Senator Richard M. Nixon of California, to capitalize on the Red Scare by accusing the Truman administration of disloyalty. Eisenhower himself charged the administration with responsibility for the communist invasion of Korea and won wide acclaim when he dramatically promised that if elected he would visit Korea in person to end the war.

Eisenhower won over many farmers, ethnic whites, workers, and Roman Catholics who had previously voted Democratic. He defeated Stevenson by a large margin, carrying 39 states, including three in the once solidly Democratic South. Despite Eisenhower’s overwhelming victory, Republicans gained control of the House by just eight votes and managed only a tie in the Senate. Because the Republican margin was so slight, and because many right-wing Republicans in Congress disagreed with his policies, Eisenhower would increasingly depend upon Democrats to realize his objectives.

Eisenhower had promised to end the Korean War, hold the line on government spending, balance the budget, abolish inflation, and reform the Republican Party. On July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed in Korea freezing the status quo. By cutting defense spending while taxes remained fairly high, and by keeping a tight rein on credit, Eisenhower was able to avoid serious deficits, abolish inflation, and, despite several small recessions, encourage steady economic growth that made Americans more prosperous than they had ever been before. Eisenhower also supported public works and a modest expansion of government social programs. In 1954 the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation was established by Congress. In 1956 Congress authorized the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, Eisenhower’s pet project and the largest public works program in history. Amendments to the Social Security Act in 1954 and 1956 extended benefits to millions not previously covered. Thus, Eisenhower achieved all but the last of his goals, and even in that he was at least partially successful. At first Eisenhower did little to check the Red Scare, but in 1954 Senator McCarthy unwisely began to investigate the administration and the U.S. Army. This led to a full-scale investigation of McCarthy’s own activities, and on December 2 the Senate, with Eisenhower playing a behind-the-scenes role, formally censured McCarthy for abusing his colleagues. McCarthy soon lost all influence, and his fall did much to remove the poison that had infected American politics. In short, Eisenhower was so successful in restoring tranquillity that, by the end of his first term, some people were complaining that life had become too dull.

Tensions eased in foreign affairs as well. On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died, opening the door to better relations with the Soviet Union. In 1955 the Soviets agreed to end the four-power occupation of Austria, and in that July Eisenhower met in Geneva with the new Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, for talks that were friendly though inconclusive.

As for military policy, Eisenhower instituted the “New Look,” which entailed reducing the army from 1,500,000 men in 1953 to 900,000 in 1960. The navy experienced smaller reductions, while air force expenditures rose. Eisenhower was primarily interested in deterring a nuclear attack and to that end promoted expensive developments in nuclear weaponry and long-range missiles.

Eisenhower’s second term

Despite suffering a heart attack in 1955 and a case of ileitis that required surgery the next year, Eisenhower stood for reelection in 1956. His opponent was once again Stevenson. Two world crises dominated the campaign. On October 23, Hungarians revolted against communist rule, an uprising that was swiftly crushed by Red Army tanks. On October 29, Israel invaded Egypt, supported by British and French forces looking to regain control of the Suez Canal and, perhaps, to destroy Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had nationalized the canal in July. Eisenhower handled both crises deftly, forcing the invaders to withdraw from Egypt and preventing events in Hungary from triggering a confrontation between the superpowers. Owing in part to these crises, Eisenhower carried all but seven states in the election. It was a purely personal victory, however, for the Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.

Domestic issues

Although the Eisenhower administration can, in general, be characterized as a period of growth and prosperity, some problems did begin to arise during the second term. In 1957–58 an economic recession hit and unemployment rose to its highest level since 1941. Labour problems increased in intensity, with some 500,000 steelworkers going on strike for 116 days in 1959. There was even evidence of corruption on the Eisenhower staff. The president remained personally popular, but public discontent was demonstrated in the large majorities gained by the Democrats in the congressional elections of 1958.

Problems associated with postwar population trends also began to be recognized. The U.S. population, which had grown markedly throughout the 1950s, passed 179,000,000 in 1960. Growth was concentrated in the West, and the country became increasingly urbanized as the middle class moved from the cities to new suburban developments. The migration left cities without their tax base but with responsibility for an increasing number of poor residents. It also resulted in a huge increase in commuters, which in turn led to continuing problems of traffic and pollution.

During Eisenhower’s second term, race became a central national concern for the first time since Reconstruction. Some civil rights advances had been made in previous years. In 1954 the Supreme Court had ruled that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. The decision provoked intense resistance in the South but was followed by a chain of rulings and orders that continually narrowed the right to discriminate. In 1955 Martin Luther King, Jr., led a boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, giving rise to the nonviolent civil rights movement. But neither the president nor Congress became involved in the race issue until 1957, when the segregationist governor of Arkansas blocked the integration of a high school in Little Rock. Eisenhower then sent federal troops to enforce the court’s order for integration. Congress was similarly prompted to pass the first civil rights law in 82 years, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which set the stage for the more far-reaching legislation that would follow in the 1960s.

World affairs

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union orbited the first artificial satellite, arousing fears that the United States was falling behind the Soviets technologically. This prompted Eisenhower, who generally held the line on spending, to sign the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which provided extensive aid to schools and students in order to bring American education up to what were regarded as Soviet levels of achievement. The event also strengthened demands for the acceleration of the arms and space races, which eventually led to the U.S. Moon landing on July 20, 1969, and to a remarkable expansion of scientific knowledge. In 1958, threatened and actual conflicts between governments friendly to Western powers and unfriendly or communist forces in Lebanon, the islands of Quemoy and Matsu offshore of China, Berlin, and Cuba caused additional concern. Only a minority believed that the United States was still ahead in military and space technology, though in fact this was true.

The illness of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in March 1959, and his subsequent resignation, led the president to increase his own activity in foreign affairs. He now traveled more and met more often with heads of state. The most important meeting was to be a summit in 1960 with Khrushchev and Western leaders to discuss such matters as Berlin, German reunification, and arms control. But two weeks before the scheduled date an American U-2 spy plane was shot down deep inside the Soviet Union. Wrangling over this incident destroyed both the Paris summit and any hopes of bettering U.S.-Soviet relations.

An assessment of the postwar era

Despite great differences in style and emphasis, the administrations of Truman and Eisenhower were notable for their continuity. Both were essentially periods of reconstruction. After 15 years of depression and war, people were not interested in social reform but in rebuilding and expanding the educational and transportation systems, achieving stable economic growth, and, in the case of the younger generation whose lives had been most disrupted by World War II, in marrying and having children. Thus, the postwar era was the age of the housing boom, the television boom, and the baby boom, of high birth and comparatively low divorce rates, of proliferating suburbs and a self-conscious emphasis upon family “togetherness.” Though frustrating to social reformers, this was probably a necessary phase of development. Once the country had been physically rebuilt, the practical needs of a rapidly growing population had been met, and standards of living had risen, there would come another age of reform.

The arrival of this new age was indicated in 1960 by the comparative youth of the presidential candidates chosen by the two major parties. The Democratic nominee, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, was 43; the Republican, Vice President Nixon, was 47. They both were ardent cold warriors and political moderates. Kennedy’s relative inexperience and his religion (he was the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee since Al Smith) placed him at an initial disadvantage. But the favourable impression he created during a series of televised debates with Nixon and the support he received from blacks after he helped the imprisoned black leader Martin Luther King, Jr., enabled him to defeat Nixon in a closely contested election.

The Kennedy and Johnson administrations

The New Frontier

During the campaign Kennedy had stated that America was “on the edge of a New Frontier”; in his inaugural speech he spoke of “a new generation of Americans”; and during his presidency he seemed to be taking government in a new direction, away from the easygoing Eisenhower style. His administration was headed by strong, dedicated personalities. The Kennedy staff was also predominantly young. Its energy and commitment revitalized the nation, but its competence was soon called into question.

In April 1961 Kennedy authorized a plan that had been initiated under Eisenhower for a covert invasion of Cuba to overthrow the newly installed, Soviet-supported Communist regime of Fidel Castro. The invasion was repulsed at the Bay of Pigs, embarrassing the administration and worsening relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. These deteriorated further at a private meeting between Kennedy and Khrushchev in June 1961 when the Soviet leader was perceived as attempting to bully his young American counterpart. Relations hit bottom in October 1962 when the Soviets secretly began to install long-range offensive missiles in Cuba, which threatened to tip the balance of nuclear power. Kennedy forced the removal of the missiles, gaining back the status he had lost at the Bay of Pigs and in his meeting with Khrushchev. Kennedy then began to work toward improving international relations, and in July 1963 he concluded a treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union banning atomic tests in the atmosphere and underwater. His program of aid to Latin America, the Alliance for Progress, raised inter-American relations to their highest level since the days of Franklin Roosevelt.

Kennedy’s domestic policies were designed to stimulate international trade, reduce unemployment, provide medical care for the aged, reduce federal income taxes, and protect the civil rights of blacks. The latter issue, which had aroused national concern in 1962 when federal troops were employed to assure the admission of a Negro at the University of Mississippi, caused further concern in 1963, when similar action was taken at the University of Alabama and mass demonstrations were held in support of desegregation. Although the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the administration’s proposals usually encountered strong opposition from a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats. With Congress’s support, Kennedy was able to increase military spending substantially. This led to greater readiness but also to a significant rise in the number of long-range U.S. missiles, which prompted a similar Soviet response.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, most probably by a lone gunman, though conspiracy theories abounded. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office immediately.

The Great Society

Johnson’s first job in office was to secure enactment of New Frontier bills that had been languishing in Congress. By far the most important of these was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson pushed through despite a filibuster by Southern senators that lasted 57 days. The act provided machinery to secure equal access to accommodations, to prevent discrimination in employment by federal contractors, and to cut off funds to segregated school districts. It also authorized the Justice Department to take a more active role in civil rights cases. Johnson went beyond the New Frontier in 1964 by declaring war on poverty. His Economic Opportunity Act provided funds for vocational training, created a Job Corps to train youths in conservation camps and urban centres, encouraged community action programs, extended loans to small businessmen and farmers, and established a domestic peace corps, the counterpart of a popular foreign program created by President Kennedy.

Johnson provided dynamic and successful leadership at a time of national trauma, and in the election of 1964 he won a landslide victory over his Republican opponent, the conservative senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. More importantly, the Democrats gained 38 seats in the House of Representatives that year, enough to override the conservative bloc and enact a body of liberal social legislation.

With this clear mandate, Johnson submitted the most sweeping legislative program to Congress since the New Deal. He outlined his plan for achieving a “Great Society” in his 1965 State of the Union address, and over the next two years he persuaded Congress to approve most of his proposals. The Appalachian Regional Development Act provided aid for that economically depressed area. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 established a Cabinet-level department to coordinate federal housing programs. Johnson’s Medicare bill fulfilled President Truman’s dream of providing health care for the aged. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided federal funding for public and private education below the college level. The Higher Education Act of 1965 provided scholarships for more than 140,000 needy students and authorized a National Teachers Corps. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the discriminatory national-origins quota system. The minimum wage was raised and its coverage extended in 1966. In 1967, social security pensions were raised and coverage expanded. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Area Redevelopment Act of 1966 provided aid to cities rebuilding blighted areas. Other measures dealt with mass transit, truth in packaging and lending, beautification, conservation, water and air quality, safety, and support for the arts.

Race relations

The civil rights revolution came to a head under the Johnson administration. Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most Southern blacks found it difficult to exercise their voting rights. In 1965, mass demonstrations were held to protest the violence and other means used to prevent black voter registration. After a peaceful protest march at Selma, Alabama, was violently broken up by white authorities, Johnson responded with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which abolished literacy tests and other voter restrictions and authorized federal intervention against voter discrimination. The subsequent rise in black voter registration transformed politics in the South.

Despite these gains, many blacks remained dissatisfied by the slow progress. The nonviolent civil rights movement was challenged by “black power” advocates, who expelled or alienated whites and crippled the movement. Race riots broke out in most of the nation’s large cities, notably in 1965 in the Watts district of Los Angeles, leaving 34 dead, and two years later in Newark and Detroit. Four summers of violence resulted in many deaths and property losses that left whole neighborhoods ruined and their residents more distressed than ever. After a final round provoked by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968, the rioting abated.

Social changes

The 1960s were marked by the greatest changes in morals and manners since the 1920s. Young people, college students in particular, rebelled against what they viewed as the repressed, conformist society of their parents. They advocated a sexual revolution, aided by the birth control pill and later by Roe v. Wade (1973), a Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. “Recreational” drugs such as marijuana and LSD were increasingly used. Opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam promoted the rise of a New Left, which was anticapitalist as well as antiwar. A “counterculture” sprang up that legitimized radical standards of taste and behaviour in the arts as well as in life. Feminism was reborn and joined the ranks of radical causes.

Except for feminism, most organized expressions of the counterculture and the New Left did not long survive the sixties. Nevertheless they changed American life. Drug taking, previously confined largely to ghettos, became part of middle-class life. The sexual revolution reduced government censorship, changed attitudes toward traditional sexual roles, and enabled homosexuals to organize and acknowledge their identities as never before. Unrestrained individualism played havoc with family values. People began marrying later and having fewer children. The divorce rate accelerated to the point that the number of divorces per year was roughly half the number of marriages. The number of abortions rose, as did the illegitimacy rate. By the 1980s one in six families was headed by a single woman, and over half of all people living in poverty, including some 12,000,000 children, belonged to such families. Because inflation and recession made it hard to support even intact families on a single income, a majority of mothers entered the work force. Thus the stable, family-oriented society of the 1950s became a thing of the past.

The Vietnam War

U.S. involvement in Vietnam dated to the Truman administration, when economic and military aid was provided to deter a communist takeover of French Indochina. When France withdrew and Vietnam was divided in two in 1954, the United States continued to support anticommunist forces in South Vietnam. By 1964, communist insurgents were winning their struggle against the government of South Vietnam, which a decade of American aid had failed to strengthen or reform. In August, following an allegedly unprovoked attack on U.S. warships patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin, a resolution pledging complete support for American action in Vietnam was passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and with only two dissenting votes in the Senate.

After the fall elections, Johnson began deploying a huge force in Vietnam (more than half a million troops in 1968, together with strong air and naval units). This power was directed not only against the Viet Cong insurgents but also against North Vietnam, which increased its efforts as American participation escalated. Despite massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, the communists refused to yield. On January 30, 1968, disregarding a truce called for the Tet (lunar new year) holiday, the communists launched an offensive against every major urban area in South Vietnam. Although the Tet Offensive was a military failure, it proved to be a political victory for the communists because it persuaded many Americans that the war could not be ended at a bearable price. Opposition to U.S. involvement became the major issue of the 1968 election. After Senator Eugene McCarthy, a leading critic of the war, ran strongly against him in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson announced that he would not seek or accept renomination. He also curtailed bombing operations, opened peace talks with the North Vietnamese, and on November 1 ended the bombing of North Vietnam.

While war efforts were being reduced, violence within the United States seemed to be growing. Just two months after King’s assassination, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated. President Johnson then secured the nomination of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, where violence again erupted as antiwar demonstrators were manhandled by local police. Humphrey lost the election to the Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon. The narrowness of Nixon’s margin resulted from a third-party campaign by the former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who attracted conservative votes that would otherwise have gone to Nixon. Democrats retained large majorities in both houses of Congress.

The 1970s

The Richard M. Nixon administration

Foreign affairs

Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, believed that American power relative to that of other nations had declined to the point where a fundamental reorientation was necessary. They sought improved relations with the Soviet Union to make possible reductions in military strength while at the same time enhancing American security. In 1969 the Nixon Doctrine called for allied nations, especially in Asia, to take more responsibility for their own defense. Nixon’s policy of détente led to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which resulted in a treaty with the Soviet Union all but terminating antiballistic missile systems. In 1972 Nixon and Kissinger negotiated an Interim Agreement that limited the number of strategic offensive missiles each side could deploy in the future. Nixon also dramatically reversed Sino-American relations with a secret visit by Kissinger to Peking in July 1971. This led to a presidential visit the following year and to the establishment of strong ties between the two nations. Nixon then visited Moscow as well, showing that détente with the rival communist powers did not mean that he would play them off against one another.

The limits of détente were tested by the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War of October 1973, in which the United States supported Israel and the Soviet Union the Arabs. Nixon managed the crisis well, preventing the confrontation with the Soviets from getting out of hand and negotiating a cease-fire that made possible later improvements in Israeli-Egyptian relations. Nixon and Kissinger dramatically altered U.S. foreign relations, modifying containment, reducing the importance of alliances, and making the balance of power and the dual relationship with the Soviet Union and China keystones of national policy.

Meanwhile, inconclusive fighting continued in Vietnam, and unproductive peace talks continued in Paris. Although in 1969 Nixon announced his policy of “Vietnamization,” according to which more and more of the fighting was to be assumed by South Vietnam itself, he began by expanding the fighting in Southeast Asia with a 1970 “incursion” into Cambodia. This incident aroused strong protest; student demonstrations at Kent State University in Ohio led on May 4 to a confrontation with troops of the Ohio National Guard, who fired on the students without orders, killing four and wounding several others. National revulsion at this act led to serious disorders at many universities and forced some of them to close for the remainder of the term. Further antiwar demonstrations followed the 1971 U.S. invasion of Laos and Nixon’s decision to resume intensive bombing of North Vietnam in 1972.

Peace negotiations with North Vietnam slowly progressed, and a cease-fire agreement was finally signed on January 27, 1973. The agreement, which provided for exchange of prisoners of war and for U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam without any similar commitment from the North Vietnamese, ended 12 years of U.S. military effort that had taken some 58,000 American lives.

Domestic affairs

When Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had presided over the most liberal Supreme Court in history, retired in 1969, Nixon replaced him with the conservative Warren Burger. Three other retirements enabled Nixon to appoint a total of four moderate or conservative justices. The Burger court, though it was expected to, did not reverse the policies laid down by its predecessor.

Congress enacted Nixon’s revenue-sharing program, which provided direct grants to state and local governments. Congress also expanded social security and federally subsidized housing. In 1972 the Congress, with the support of the president, adopted a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women. Despite widespread support, the Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, as it was called, failed to secure ratification in a sufficient number of states. (Subsequent legislation and court decisions, however, gave women in substance what the ERA had been designed to secure.)

The cost of living continued to rise, until by June 1970 it was 30 percent above the 1960 level; industrial production declined, as did the stock market. By mid-1971 unemployment reached a 10-year peak of 6 percent, and inflation continued. Wage and price controls were instituted, the dollar was devalued, and the limitation on the national debt was raised three times in 1972 alone. The U.S. trade deficit improved, but inflation remained unchecked.

The Watergate scandal

A scandal surfaced in June 1972, when five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate office-apartment building in Washington. When it was learned that the burglars had been hired by the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP), John Mitchell, a former U.S. attorney general, resigned as director of CRP. These events, however, had no effect on the election that fall. Even though the Democrats retained majorities in both the Senate and the House, Nixon won a landslide victory over Democratic nominee Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

In 1973, however, it was revealed that an attempt to suppress knowledge of the connection between the Watergate affair and CRP involved highly placed members of the White House staff. In response, a Senate select committee was formed and opened hearings in May, and Nixon appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal. Amid conflicting testimony, almost daily disclosures of further scandals, and continuing resignations of administrative personnel, a battle developed between the legislative and executive branches of government. Nixon attempted to stop the investigation by firing Cox, leading Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus to resign. This “Saturday night massacre” of Justice Department officials did not, however, stem the flow of damaging revelations, confessions, and indictments.

The Watergate affair itself was further complicated by the revelation of other irregularities. It became known that a security unit in the White House had engaged in illegal activities under the cloak of national security. Nixon’s personal finances were questioned, and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned after pleading no contest to charges of income tax evasion. On December 6, 1973, Nixon’s nominee, Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, was approved by Congress as the new vice president.

On May 9, 1974, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives began hearing evidence relating to a possible impeachment proceeding. On July 27–30 it voted to recommend that Nixon be impeached on three charges. On August 5 Nixon obeyed a Supreme Court order to release transcripts of three tape-recorded conversations, and he admitted that, as evidenced in the recordings, he had taken steps to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation away from the White House when its inquiries into the Watergate burglary were leading it toward his staff.

Nixon’s support in Congress vanished, and it seemed probable that he would be impeached. On the evening of August 8, in a television address, Nixon announced his resignation, effective the next day. At noon on August 9, Vice President Ford was sworn in as his successor, the first president not elected either to the office or to the vice presidency.

The Gerald R. Ford administration

Ford’s was essentially a caretaker government. He had no mandate and no broad political base, his party was tainted by Watergate, and he angered many when he granted Nixon an unconditional pardon on September 8, 1974. Henry Kissinger remained secretary of state and conducted foreign policy along the lines previously laid down by Nixon and himself. Ford’s principal concern was the economy, which had begun to show signs of weakness. A brief Arab oil embargo during the Yom Kippur War had led to a quadrupling of oil prices, and the oil shock produced both galloping inflation and a recession. Prices rose more than 10 percent in 1974 and unemployment reached 9.2 percent in May 1974. Ford was no more able than Nixon to deal with the combination of inflation and recession, called “stagflation,” and Congress had no remedies either. For the most part Congress and the president were at odds. Ford vetoed no fewer than 50 bills during his short term in office.

In the election of 1976 Ford won the nomination of his party, fighting off a strong challenge by Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California. In a crowded field of contenders, the little-known ex-governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, won the Democratic nomination by starting early and making a virtue of his inexperience. Ford, despite Watergate and stagflation, nearly won the election, Carter receiving the smallest electoral margin since 1916.

The Jimmy Carter administration

Foreign affairs

More than any other president, Carter used diplomacy to promote human rights, especially with regard to the governments of South Korea, Iran, Argentina, South Africa, and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Efforts to continue the détente with the U.S.S.R. foundered as the Soviets supported revolutions in Africa, deployed medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe, and occupied Afghanistan. Relations with the People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, improved, and full diplomatic recognition of the Communist government took effect on January 1, 1979. In September 1977 the United States and Panama signed two treaties giving control of the Panama Canal to Panama in the year 2000 and providing for the neutrality of the waterway.

Carter’s most noted achievement was to sponsor a great step toward peace in the Middle East. In September 1978 he met with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at a two-week negotiating session at Camp David, Maryland, and on September 17 Carter announced that two accords had been signed establishing the terms for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Further torturous negotiations followed before the peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1979.

Carter’s greatest defeat was administered by Iran. Following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had been supported by the United States, the Islāmic Republic of Iran was proclaimed in Iran on February 1, 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In November militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and held its occupants hostage. An attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980 failed, and the hostages were not released until Carter left office in January 1981. Carter’s inability to either resolve the hostage crisis or to manage American perceptions of it disabled him as a leader.

Domestic policy

Carter’s effectiveness in domestic affairs was generally hampered by his failure to establish good relations with Congress, his frequent changes of course, the distractions caused by foreign problems, and his inability to inspire public confidence. His major domestic effort was directed against the energy crisis, though with indifferent results. Inflation continued to rise, and in the summer of 1979 Carter appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker raised interest rates to unprecedented levels, which resulted in a severe recession but brought inflation under control.

In the election of 1980 Ronald Reagan was the Republican nominee, while Republican John B. Anderson of Illinois headed a third ticket and received 5,600,000 votes. Reagan easily defeated the discredited Carter, and the Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since 1954.

The late 20th century

The Ronald Reagan administration

Reagan took office and pledged to reverse the trend toward big government and to rejuvenate the economy, based on the theory that cutting taxes would stimulate so much growth that tax revenues would actually rise. In May 1981, two months after there had been an assassination attempt on Reagan, Congress approved his program, which would reduce income taxes by 25 percent over a three-year period, cut federal spending on social programs, and greatly accelerate a military buildup that had begun under Carter. The recession that had resulted from Volcker’s policy of ending inflation through high interest rates deepened in 1981, but by 1984 it was clearly waning, without a resurgence of inflation. The U.S. economy experienced a strong recovery.

In foreign affairs Reagan often took bold action, but the results were usually disappointing. His effort to unseat the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua through aid to the Contras, a rebel force seeking to overthrow the government, was unpopular and unsuccessful. U.S.-Soviet relations were the chilliest they had been since the height of the Cold War. Reagan’s decision to send a battalion of U.S. marines to Lebanon in support of a cease-fire resulted in a terrorist attack in 1983, in which some 260 marines were killed. On October 21, 1983, he launched an invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada, where Cuban influence was growing. U.S. forces prevailed, despite much bungling. Popular at home, the invasion was criticized almost everywhere else. Relations with China worsened at first but improved in 1984 with an exchange of state visits.

Reagan benefited in the election of 1984 from a high degree of personal popularity, from the reduction in inflation, and from the beginnings of economic recovery. This combination proved too much for the Democratic nominee, former vice president Walter Mondale of Minnesota, and his running mate, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the first female vice presidential candidate ever to be named by a major party.

Reagan’s second term was more successful than his first in regard to foreign affairs. In 1987 he negotiated an intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty with the Soviet Union, eliminating two classes of weapon systems that each nation had deployed in Europe. This was the first arms-limitation agreement ever to result in the actual destruction of existing weapons. Relations between the superpowers had improved radically by 1988, owing primarily to the new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms at home were matched by equally great changes in foreign policy. An exchange of unusually warm state visits in 1988 was followed by Soviet promises of substantial force reductions, especially in Europe.

Reagan’s domestic policies were unchanged. His popularity remained consistently high, dipping only briefly in 1987 after it was learned that his administration had secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages and then had illegally used the profits to subsidize the Contras. In the short run his economic measures succeeded. Inflation remained low, as did unemployment, while economic growth continued. Nonetheless, while spending for domestic programs fell, military spending continued to rise, and revenues did not increase as had been predicted. The result was a staggering growth in the budget deficit. The United States, which had been a creditor nation in 1980, was by the late 1980s the world’s largest debtor nation.

Furthermore, although economic recovery had been strong, individual income in constant dollars was still lower than in the early 1970s, and family income remained constant only because many more married women were in the labour force. Savings were at an all-time low, and productivity gains were averaging only about 1 percent a year. Reagan had solved the short-term problems of inflation and recession, but he did so with borrowed money and without touching the deeper sources of America’s economic decline. In 1988 Vice President George Bush of Texas defeated the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts.

The George Bush administration

In foreign affairs Bush continued the key policies of the Reagan administration, especially by retaining cordial relations with the Soviet Union and its successor states. In December 1989 Bush ordered U.S. troops to seize control of Panama and arrest its de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, who faced drug trafficking and racketeering charges in the United States.

Bush’s leadership and diplomatic skills were severely tested by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which began on August 2, 1990. At risk was not only the sovereignty of this small sheikhdom but also U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, including access to the region’s vast oil supplies. Fearing that Iraqi aggression would spill over into Saudi Arabia, Bush swiftly organized a multinational coalition composed mostly of NATO and Arab countries. Under the auspices of the United Nations, some 500,000 U.S. troops (the largest mobilization of U.S. military personnel since the Vietnam War) were brought together with other coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. Lasting from January 16 to February 28, the war was easily won by the coalition at only slight material and human cost, but its sophisticated weapons caused heavy damage to Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructure and left many Iraqi soldiers dead. With the declining power (and subsequent collapse in 1991) of the Soviet Union, the war also emphasized the role of the United States as the world’s single military superpower.

This short and relatively inexpensive war, paid for largely by U.S. allies, was popular while it lasted but stimulated a recession that ruined Bush’s approval rating. The immense national debt ruled out large federal expenditures, the usual cure for recessions. The modest bills Bush supported failed in Congress, which was controlled by the Democrats. Apart from a budget agreement with Congress in 1990, which broke Bush’s promise not to raise taxes, little was done to control the annual deficits, made worse by the recession.

In the 1992 presidential election, Democrat William (Bill) Clinton, the governor of Arkansas, defeated Bush in a race in which independent candidate Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote—more than any third candidate had received since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

The Bill Clinton administration

The beginning of the 1990s was a difficult time for the United States. The country was plagued not only by a sluggish economy but by violent crime (much of it drug-related), poverty, welfare dependency, problematic race relations, and spiraling health costs. Although Clinton promised to boost both the economy and the quality of life, his administration got off to a shaky start, the victim of what some critics have called ineptitude and bad judgment. One of Clinton’s first acts was to attempt to fulfill a campaign promise to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military. After encountering strong criticism from conservatives and some military leaders—including Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Clinton was eventually forced to support a compromise policy—summed up by the phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell”—that was viewed as being at once ambiguous, unsatisfactory to either side of the issue, and possibly unconstitutional. (The practical effect of the policy was actually to increase the number of men and women discharged from the military for homosexuality.) His first two nominees for attorney general withdrew over ethics questions, and two major pieces of legislation—an economic stimulus package and a campaign finance reform bill—were blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate. In the hope that he could avoid a major confrontation with Congress, he set aside any further attempts at campaign finance reform. During the presidential campaign, Clinton promised to institute a system of universal health insurance. His appointment of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to chair a task force on health care reform drew stark criticism from Republicans, who objected both to the propriety of the arrangement and to what they considered her outspoken feminism. They campaigned fiercely against the task force’s eventual proposal, and none of the numerous recommendations were formally submitted to Congress.

Despite these early missteps, the Clinton administration had numerous policy and personnel successes. Although Perot had spoken vividly of the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he said would produce a “giant sucking sound” as American jobs were lost to Mexico, Congress passed the measure and Clinton signed it into law, thereby creating a generally successful free-trade zone between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. During Clinton’s first term, Congress enacted with Clinton’s support a deficit reduction package to reverse the spiraling debt that had been accrued during the 1980s and ’90s, and he signed some 30 major bills related to women and family issues, including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Clinton also changed the face of the federal government, appointing women and minorities to significant posts throughout his administration, including Janet Reno as the first woman attorney general, Donna Shalala as secretary of Health and Human Services, Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general, Madeleine Albright as the first woman secretary of state, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a justice on the Supreme Court.

With Clinton’s popularity sagging after the health care debacle, the 1994 elections resulted in the opposition Republican Party winning a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. This historic victory was viewed by many—especially the House Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich—as the voters’ repudiation of the Clinton presidency. A chastened Clinton subsequently accommodated some of the Republican proposals—offering a more aggressive deficit reduction plan and a massive overhaul of the nation’s welfare system—while opposing Republican efforts to slow the growth of government spending on popular programs such as Medicare. Ultimately the uncompromising and confrontational behaviour of the congressional Republicans produced the opposite of what they intended, and after a budget impasse between the Republicans and Clinton in 1995 and 1996—which forced two partial government shutdowns, including one for 22 days (the longest closure of government operations to date)—Clinton won considerable public support for his more moderate approach.

Clinton’s foreign policy ventures included a successful effort in 1994 to reinstate Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1991; a commitment of U.S. forces to a peacekeeping initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and a leading role in the ongoing initiatives to bring a permanent resolution to the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who was later assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to territorial concessions to the Palestinians) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yāsir ʾArafāt to Washington to sign a historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

During the Clinton administration the United States remained a target for international terrorists with bomb attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City (1993), on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), and on the U.S. Navy in Yemen (2000). The domestic front, though, was the site of unexpected antigovernment violence when on April 19, 1995, an American, Timothy McVeigh, detonated a bomb in a terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 and injuring more than 500.

Although scandal was never far from the White House—a fellow Arkansan who had been part of the administration committed suicide; there were rumours of financial irregularities that had occurred while Clinton was governor of Arkansas; opponents charged that the first lady engineered the firing of staff in the White House travel office (“Travelgate”); former associates were indicted and convicted of crimes; and rumours of sexual impropriety persisted—the economy made a slow but steady recovery after 1991, marked by dramatic gains in the stock market in the mid-1990s. Buoyed by the economic growth, Clinton was easily reelected in 1996, capturing 49 percent of the popular vote to 41 percent for Republican challenger Bob Dole and 8 percent for Perot. In the electoral college Clinton won 379 votes to Dole’s 159.

Economic growth continued during Clinton’s second term, eventually setting a record for the nation’s longest peacetime economic expansion. After enormous budget deficits throughout the 1980s and early 1990s—including a $290 billion deficit in 1992—by 1998 the Clinton administration oversaw the first balanced budget and budget surpluses since 1969. The vibrant economy produced a tripling in the value of the stock market, historically high levels of home ownership, and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years.

During Clinton’s first term Attorney General Reno approved an investigation into Clinton’s business dealings in Arkansas. The resulting inquiry, known as Whitewater—the name of the housing development corporation at the centre of the controversy—was led from 1994 by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Although the investigation lasted several years and cost more than $50 million, Starr was unable to find conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. When a three-judge panel allowed him to expand the scope of his investigation, however, he uncovered evidence of an affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Clinton repeatedly and publicly denied that the affair had taken place. After conclusive evidence of the affair surfaced, Clinton admitted the affair and apologized to his family and to the American public. On the basis of Starr’s 445-page report and supporting evidence, hearings conducted before the 1998 midterm elections resulted in Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice by a lame-duck session of the House of Representatives after the election. Clinton was acquitted of the charges by the Senate in 1999. During the impeachment proceedings, foreign policy also dominated the headlines. In December 1998 Clinton, citing Iraqi noncompliance with UN resolutions and weapons inspectors, ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq; the military action prompted Iraq to halt further weapons inspections.

When the dust had settled, the Clinton administration was damaged but not broken. Bill Clinton’s job approval rating remained high during the final years of his presidency, and in 1999 Hillary Clinton launched a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan in New York, thereby becoming the first first lady to win elective office. During the final year of his presidency, Clinton invited Yāsir ʾArafāt and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to the United States in an attempt to broker a final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The eventual breakdown of the talks, along with subsequent events in Jerusalem and elsewhere, resulted in some of the deadliest conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians in more than a decade. Clinton also became the first American president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

Despite continued economic growth, the 2000 presidential election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, the former president’s eldest son, was one of the closest and most controversial in the republic’s history. Although Gore won the nationwide popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, the presidency hinged on the outcome in Florida, whose 25 electoral votes would give the winner of that state a narrow majority in the electoral college. With Bush leading in Florida by fewer than 1,000 votes after a mandatory statewide recount, the presidency remained undecided for five weeks as Florida state courts and federal courts heard numerous legal challenges. After a divided Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount of the approximately 45,000 “undervotes” (i.e., ballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential vote) and the inclusion of hand-counted ballots in two counties that had not been previously certified by Florida’s secretary of state—which reduced Bush’s margin to under 200 votes before the manual recounting began—the Bush campaign quickly filed an appeal to halt the manual recount, which the U.S. Supreme Court granted by a 5–4 vote pending oral arguments. Concluding (7–2) that a quick statewide recount could not be performed fairly unless elaborate ground rules were established, the court issued a controversial 5-to-4 decision to reverse the Florida Supreme Court’s recount order, effectively awarding the presidency to Bush (seeBush v. Gore). With his 271-to-266 victory in the electoral college, Bush became the first president since 1888 to win the election despite losing the nationwide popular vote.

The George W. Bush administration

Bush became the first Republican president since the 1950s to enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress. Among the initial domestic challenges that faced the Bush administration were a weakening national economy and an energy crisis in California. Bush, who had campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” promoted traditionally conservative policies in domestic affairs, the centrepiece of which was a $1.35 trillion tax-cut bill he signed into law in June 2001. That month, however, Republican Senator Jim Jeffords became an independent, giving the Democrats control of the Senate. Subsequently Bush encountered strong congressional resistance to some of his initiatives, such as an educational voucher program that would provide subsidies to parents who send their children to private schools, the creation of a nuclear missile defense system, and federal funding for selected social programs of religious groups. In foreign affairs, the administration attempted to liberalize U.S. immigration policy with regard to Mexico, with which it struck closer ties. But it faced sharp criticism from China for its outspoken support of Taiwan and from Europe and elsewhere for its abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, and for its declared intention to withdraw from the 1972 Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (it formally withdrew from the treaty in 2002).

The greatest challenge of Bush’s first year in office came on the heels of a massive terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, in which hijacked commercial airliners were employed as suicide bombs. Two of the four hijacked planes leveled the twin towers of the World Trade Center and collapsed or damaged many of the surrounding buildings in New York City, another destroyed a large section of the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and still another crashed in the southern Pennsylvania countryside. Some 3,000 people were killed in this, the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history (see September 11 attacks). Bush responded with a call for a global war on terrorism. Identifying exiled Saudi millionaire and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden as the primary suspect in the acts, Bush built an international coalition against bin Laden (who later claimed responsibility for the attacks) and his network, al-Qaeda (“the Base”), and the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which had harboured bin Laden and his followers. On October 7 the United States launched aerial attacks against Afghanistan; by the end of the year the Taliban and bin Laden’s forces were routed or forced into hiding, and the Bush administration was negotiating with Afghanistan’s many factions in an attempt to establish a stable regime there.

In 2002 the U.S. economy worsened, as consumer confidence and the stock market continued to fall and corporate scandals dominated the headlines. Nevertheless, Bush remained popular, and he led the Republican Party to majorities in both the House and Senate in the midterm elections of 2002.

Despite the economic difficulties, foreign affairs continued to dominate the Bush administration’s agenda. In 2002 Bush focused world attention on Iraq, accusing Ṣaddām Ḥussein’s government of having ties to al-Qaeda and of continuing to possess and develop weapons of mass destruction, contrary to UN mandates. In November Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, engineered a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. Soon thereafter Bush declared that Iraq was in breach of the new resolution for its failure to cooperate fully with the inspectors. In mid-March, declaring that diplomacy was at an end, he issued an ultimatum giving Ṣaddām 48 hours to leave Iraq or face removal by force (though he indicated that, even if Ṣaddām chose to leave, U.S.-led military forces would enter the country to search for weapons of mass destruction and to stabilize the new government). On March 20 (local time), following Ṣaddām’s public refusal to leave, the United States and allied forces launched an attack on Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom.

With some international assistance, notably from the United Kingdom, the United States launched a brief air bombing campaign in Iraq followed by a massive ground invasion, arising from Kuwait in the south. The resistance encountered was heavier than expected, especially in the major cities, which nevertheless capitulated and fell under U.S. or British control by the end of April; on May 1 President Bush declared an end to major combat. Armed resistance, however, continued and even increased, primarily as guerrilla attacks on U.S. soldiers and on Iraqis assuming positions of leadership. The American goal of a rebuilt, democratic state in Iraq proved elusive, as U.S. administrators struggled to reinstitute basic infrastructure to the country following the victory. Just as elusive were Iraq’s former leader, Ṣaddām Ḥussein, who was eventually captured in December, and hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The lack of such evidence and continuing American casualties emboldened critics of the administration, who questioned the prewar intelligence gathered to support the invasion.

As a result, the Iraq War became a major issue in the campaign for the 2004 presidential election between Bush and his Democratic challenger, U.S. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Other campaign issues included joblessness, homeland security, free trade, health care, and the role of the country in the international community, as well as debates over religion, abortion, marriage, and civil rights. Candidate spending, voter turnout, and partisan dissension were high, and Bush defeated Kerry in a contentious and close election, which seemed, like the 2000 election, to hinge on the electoral votes of a single state, this time Ohio.

Bush began his second term emboldened by a larger Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with promises to prop up the sagging economy, allay domestic security fears, reduce the national debt, lower unemployment, and help usher in an era of democracy in Iraq. In particular, he sought to privatize Social Security and overhaul the tax system.

By mid-decade the economy showed strong signs of revival, based partly on the continuing upsurge of the housing market. Bush’s plan for Social Security reform, however, proved unpopular and never even came to a vote. The president’s personal popularity and that of his party began to wane as it was beset with a series of ethics-related scandals. In 2005 Republican House majority leader Tom Delay was forced to step down after a Texas grand jury indicted him on election-law violations; later, he was further linked to influence-peddling indiscretions that led to the conviction and imprisonment of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In 2006, reports of national security-related government wiretapping and allegations of torture of some suspected terrorists alarmed civil libertarians. The next year Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to resign after a probe into the “political” firing of eight U.S. attorneys; and Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, special assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to a special counsel regarding his involvement in the politically motivated leak of a CIA agent’s covert identity.

Even more damaging to Bush’s standing with many Americans was what was widely seen as the federal government’s failure to deal promptly and effectively with the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, especially New Orleans, in early September 2006. Moreover, with casualties mounting in Iraq, more people had come to believe that the Bush administration had misled the country into war. As a result of all these factors, the Democrats were able to win narrow majorities in both houses of Congress following the 2006 midterm election. Determined to stay the course in Iraq and in spite of strong Democratic opposition, Bush authorized a “surge” of an additional 30,000 troops that brought the total of U.S. combatants in the country to some 160,000 by autumn 2007. But even as the surge reduced violence in Iraq, the war and the president remained unpopular.

The election to succeed Bush was between Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican candidate, and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who had triumphed over the favourite, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, in a long primary battle to win the Democratic nomination. At the height of the contest, the U.S. economy was thrown into turmoil by a financial crisis. From September 19 to October 10, the Dow Jones Average dropped 26 percent. At the same time, there was a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide, caused in part by a debacle related to subprime mortgages. While the housing market boomed, individuals lacking the credit ratings necessary for conventional mortgages had been able to obtain subprime mortgages, most of which were adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) at low, so-called teaser, interest rates that ballooned after a few years. The rates for many of those ARMs jumped at the same time that overbuilding undercut the housing market; foreclosures mounted, and investment banks that under recent deregulation had been allowed to overleverage their assets foundered, resulting in the bankruptcy or sale of several major financial institutions. The U.S. economic and political establishment reacted by passing (after an unsuccessful first attempt) the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which sought to prevent further collapse and to bail out the economy. In the process, the U.S. government provided loans to, and in some cases took an ownership stake in, financial institutions through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which allocated $700 billion to the recovery effort.

The Barack Obama administration

The crisis worked against McCain, whom many voters associated with the unpopular policies of the administration, and worked for the highly charismatic Obama, whose campaign from its outset had been based on the theme of sweeping political change. Obama defeated McCain, becoming the first African American elected to the presidency. He captured nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes—defending those states that had gone Democratic in the 2004 election, taking the lion’s share of battleground states, and winning several states that had been reliably Republican in recent presidential elections.

In the interim between the election and Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, the Bush administration’s handling of the distribution of the first half of the TARP funds came under considerable criticism. There were accusations that it had infused too much money into large banks without placing adequate conditions on them, rather than purchasing “toxic” assets as it had promised. In the lead-up to the inauguration, Obama and his transition team, working with Bush, persuaded the Senate to release the last half of the TARP funds, promising that they would be targeted at relief for home owners and at stimulating the credit markets. Because authorization to block the release of the funds required assent by both houses of Congress, a vote by the House of Representatives was unnecessary. (See Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.)

The economic downturn, widely referred to as the “Great Recession” (which officially dated from December 2007 in the United States), included the two most dismal quarters for the U.S. economy in more than 60 years: GDP contracted by 6.3 percent in late 2008 and by 5.7 percent in early 2009. Efforts to stabilize the economy included extending $80 billion to automakers Chrysler and General Motors, with the government assuming ownership of 8 percent and 61 percent of each, respectively; the Federal Reserve pumping well over $1 trillion into the economy by purchasing Treasury bonds; and the passage of a $787 billion stimulus spending measure. In the third quarter of 2009, GDP finally turned positive, gaining 2.2 percent on an annualized basis. However, unemployment, which had stood at 7.2 percent at the beginning of the year, hovered around 10 percent in early 2010. Moreover, the stimulative policies had helped balloon the U.S. federal deficit to $1.42 trillion, earning widespread criticism from Republicans.

Obama had entered office vowing to reduce partisanship in Washington, but he made little progress in that direction in his first year; indeed, the $787 billion stimulus package had been passed in the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. With Democrats holding substantial majorities in both houses, Obama allowed congressional leaders to shape important legislation, and Republicans, claiming that they were being largely excluded from substantive negotiations on key bills, took what most Democrats saw as an obstructionist approach, earning the nickname the “Party of No” from liberal commentators. In the meantime, a populist reaction emerged among libertarian-minded conservatives that was generally opposed to what they considered excessive taxation, to illegal immigration, and to government intervention in the private sector. This “Tea Party” movement gained steam during the summer of 2009, when town hall meetings were held across the country to debate proposed health care insurance reform, the signature issue of the Obama presidential campaign.

Republicans presented a united front in opposition to Democratic proposals for health care reform, branding them a “government takeover” of health care and protesting that the price tag would be devastatingly high. Some Republicans also claimed—falsely—that the Democratic plan would establish “death panels” that would deny coverage to seniors. Although there was also strong opposition to various aspects of the plan within the Democratic Party, the House of Representatives passed a sweeping reform bill in November 2009. The Senate was more circumspect, with Obama seemingly ceding the iniative to the so-called “Group of Six,” a group of three Republican and three Democratic senators led by conservative Democrat Sen. Max Baucus. The bill that was ultimately passed in the Senate called for considerably less change than the House bill (most notably excluding the “public option” through which a government-run program would have provided lower-cost competition for private insurance companies). It just barely survived a filibuster attempt by Republicans, holding all 58 Democrats plus the Senate’s two independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Before the two houses could attempt to bridge the differences in their bills, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as a result of the victory of Republican Scott Brown in January 2010 in the special election in Massachusetts held to replace interim senator Paul Kirk (a Democrat), who had been appointed to the seat following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy—who, ironically, had committed much of his career in government to health care reform. Although the prospects for passage dimmed, the president and the Democratic leadership, especially Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, pushed on, with Obama convening a special summit of Democrats and Republicans to debate the merits of the bills.

In March 2010, having secured the support of a sufficient number of House Democrats who had been opposed to aspects of the Senate plan (most notably pro-life advocates led by Rep. Bart Stupak, whose fears that the plan would loosen limits on abortion funding were allayed by Obama’s promise of an executive order), Pelosi engineered passage of the Senate bill in a 219–212 vote (with all Republicans and 34 Democrats in opposition) on Sunday night March 21. A subsequent bill, proposing “fixes” to the Senate bill, was then passed and sent to the Senate, where Democrats hoped to obtain passage through the use of a relatively seldom-used procedure known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority for passage. With the outcome of reconciliation still in the balance, on March 23 Obama signed into law the historic legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Senate passage of the bill of proposed fixes proved arduous, as Republicans introduced more than 40 amendments in an attempt to force another vote in the House. All those amendments were defeated in votes along party lines, and on March 25 the bill was passed by a 56–43 vote; however, because of procedural violations in some of its language, the bill went back to the House. There it passed by a 220–207 vote. No Republicans in either house voted for the bill.

In its final form, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would—once all its elements had taken effect over the next nine years—extend health care to some 32 million previously uninsured Americans and prohibit insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions. The bill, which required that all citizens obtain health care insurance, also provided subsidies for premium payments for families earning less than $88,000 per year, with the funding to come largely from a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans. It also promised a tax credit to small businesses that provide coverage for their employees.

In the spring of 2010, one of the Obama adminstration’s big economic initiatives, the financial rescue of General Motors, bore fruit as the automaker recorded its first profits in three years. In general the U.S. economy seemed to be rebounding—if slowly—however, as the summer approached, unemployment stagnated at near 10 percent. Although the Republicans and some economists criticized the economic stimulus as ineffective and predicted the onset of another recession, others argued that it may have added more than three million new jobs.

Responding to the banking and finance meltdown that had precipitated the economic downturn, Congress, in July, enacted comprehensive financial regulations; however, the headlines in spring and summer were dominated by another event, a massive oil spill some 40 miles (60 km) off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico (see Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010). The spill, which dragged on for months, began in April with an explosion and fire on a deepwater drilling platform that then collapsed, spewing oil that endangered marine life, fouled beaches, and brought a halt to fishing in a huge area. Something of a national malaise set in as the ongoing efforts by BP, the well’s owner, to contain the spill proved largely futile, and the disaster escalated to become the worst marine oil spill on record. By the time the well was capped and the spill brought under control in July 2010, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil had been released into the water.

A hallmark of Obama’s campaign had been his contention that the Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq had been to the detriment of the situation in Afghanistan; Obama argued that Afghanistan should have been the focus of U.S. military efforts. As security conditions in Iraq continued to improve, the new administration began slowly removing U.S. military personnel, with an announced goal of ending U.S. combat operations by mid-2010 and exiting the country entirely by late 2011. Meanwhile, in response to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, in February 2009 Obama raised the total troop commitment there to 68,000 and began three months of deliberations on the military’s request for another 40,000 troops, ultimately deciding to deploy an additional 30,000 troops over the objections of many Democrats. The issue of national security took centre stage on Christmas Day, 2009, when a bombing was thwarted on an airliner bound for Detroit. The perpetrator, a young Nigerian, had been trained for his mission by extremists in Yemen.

In June 2010 Obama confronted a different kind of criticism when the commander of NATO-U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and members of his staff impugned top Obama administration officials in interviews with a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine. Obama relieved McChrystal of command and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge strategy in Iraq. Although the bulk of U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in August with the official on-time end of the combat mission in the country, some 50,000 U.S. troops remained on duty there.

As the economy continued to struggle and as high levels of unemployment and underemployment persisted, much of the American electorate was commonly characterized as angry. Historically midterm congressional elections had brought losses for the party in power, but polling before the 2010 midterms indicated that discontent among voters—most notably among independents—was so great that the huge Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate were in jeopardy. The groundswell of opposition to the policies of the Obama administration and to “big government” that had given birth to the Tea Party movement took on an anti-Washington, anti-incumbent cast. This had an impact not only on Democrats but on Republicans too, as a raft of conservative candidates with Tea Party associations triumphed in primary elections over candidates favoured by the Republican Party establishment in primary contests for the 2010 midterm congressional election. In the 2010 general election, Tea Party candidates had mixed success, but the Republican Party as a whole experienced a dramatic resurgence, recapturing leadership of the House with a gain of some 60 seats (the biggest swing since 1948) and reducing but not overturning the Democrats’ Senate majority.

The weekend before voters went to the polls, the election had been replaced in the headlines by the foiling of another terrorist bombing attempt, this time involving explosive devices that were intercepted en route via air from Yemen to two Chicago-area synagogues. It was believed that the devices may have been intended to explode while still in flight.

Presidents of the United States

The table provides a chronological list of the presidents of the United States.

Vice presidents of the United States

The table provides a chronological list of the vice presidents of the United States.

First ladies of the United States

The table provides a chronological list of the first ladies of the United States.

State maps, flags, and seals

The table provides a list of state maps, flags, and seals.

State nicknames and symbols

The table provides a list of state nicknames and symbols.

Governors of U.S. states and territories

The table provides a list of governors of U.S. states and territories.